


birds of a feather

by jadeddiva



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Dark Swan and Dark Hook, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5289947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's strange, what infinite power can do to a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birds of a feather

_i’m sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter_   
_like birds of a feather we stick together_

 

It is cold in Storybrooke.

(Emma no longer feels the cold; it is strange, to be immortal, and to no longer be aware of minor inconveniences like the weather, not when she spent days on stake outs huddled in her car, blankets and coats and hand warmers to keep herself warm and - )

There. That’s it. That’s what she’s been looking for.

There is a slight movement from behind Granny’s and she’s there in an instant, appearing in the blink of an eye but he is already gone. The smoke from his departure dissipates in the winter air, but he has left something behind. Emma reaches out for the note and reads You know how I feel about the color black in his elaborate hand before letting it crumble to ash in her hands.

Asshole.

Emma smirks.

Two can play at this game.

..

When his memories from Camelot return (and they do, with such a force that they all are left reeling from impact), Emma thinks it will get better, it will not get worse. No more hiding the truth, no more hiding from her family – now her sacrifice will be out in the open for everyone to see.

She has never been more wrong.

It slowly become apparent that she never really knew Killian – or, rather, never really knew Captain Hook, scourge of the seas, the most fearsome pirate besides Blackbeard to sail the ocean blue. The Captain Hook she met in the Enchanted Forest had allowed his revenge and Pan’s machinations to grind him down, to dull the edges just enough that it was easy to let him in (she had never felt threatened by him, not really, and she wonders still if it was the seeds of true love or the fact that he wasn’t that fearsome when grief was no longer fresh).

This creature that she’s created – the monster (just like her, two parts of the same whole) who stands in his place, wears his clothing and looks at her with the same intense gaze -this creature must be more like the Captain Hook that men feared.

He is vile, and cruel, and she loves him for it.

(She wonders if that’s the Darkness within her, like calling to like, pulling at her until her feet carry her towards him, on the dock, on his ship.)

When she appears on the deck, he merely looks at her with a raised eyebrow and a salty grin.

“So grateful that you could join me, Emma,” he says, biting into her name like he hopes to rip flesh from bones (he could, she knows, and oddly it does not frighten her).

“Of course I’d join you,” she remarks as she takes her place beside his side. We are one in the same, she wants to say, parts of the whole, better together than apart but she does not. She bites her tongue and waits for him to speak first.

“I never wanted this,” he says finally, after the sun has left the horizon and sunk beneath the waves. “I never wanted any of this.”

“I’m sorry,” she admits. “I couldn’t live without you. I know we can be this together.” She reaches out her hand to brush against his, noticing how dark his rings are now, how cold his skin is beneath her fingertips. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“Oh Emma,” he tells her, “I am nowhere close to forgiving you,” and she feels a chill for the first time since she returned to Storybrooke.

…

It starts after that.

It’s strange, what infinite power can do to a relationship.

His teeth against her neck, hand pulling her hair back so he can bite her shoulder (she give as good as she gets, fingernails digging deep until she draws blood) – they are a crash of the light above and the darkness within, and she wonders if this was how it should have been (she does not regret it, does not regret the raw way that he makes her feel, how he takes away the pain that comes with the pitying looks of her parents).

She regrets only giving him the Darkness, and that is only when they are not so intimately joined.

(That comes later, when he can’t look at her as he breaks their embrace – when she can see the struggle from within as he leaves her side.)

(She would have moved heaven and earth to save him and she would do it all over again, even if he hates her for it.)

…  
He hurts her.

Not physically, no (unless you count the bite marks on her inner thighs, the palm print across her ass which she asked for, begged for) but he hurts her the way that he knows best.

He abandons her.

Days go by without seeing him save for these cat-and-mouse games – a note, a flower, a dwarf tied up to a fence ready to be saved. It’s always the dwarves, those idiots getting in the way of everything with their earnest desire to be helpful.

Never Henry, though, or her parents, and Regina and Robin have been left out of his path as well (and for that, she is grateful).

But there are days when she wants him, feels anxious and needy for him, and he is not there and he has to know, they both know each other so well, sharing the darkness as they do (he is the shadow in the corner of her eye at night, the voice in her head that cannot and will not go away).

He leaves her alone until she is ready and wanting and then he sets the conditions. A red pair of heels. A black bra. His ship, her house, the library. He takes and she takes and he gives and she gives but neither of them tip the balance, not once, in their own favor – not even when she wears boots and not heels, red and not black, ties him up instead of the other way around.

There is no way for either of them to win – not when they both want something that breaks them more each day.

(She should have known better, but even by the time she noticed she loved him she was too far gone.)

…

It is the Author’s house this time, and she meets him in the library, her heels clicking against the wooden floors.

He is in a chair when she enters, and he only raises an eyebrow when he sees her in her coat, cinched tight around her waist. She has altered the terms of their agreement, and they both know it (red, not black, and lacy, not satin).

Emma smirks.

Two can play at this game.


End file.
